What are some of the biggest pieces of revisionist history in the AFL?

[Bungeye]

In terms of just the football 93-97 was a pretty good spectacle but I think it dropped off a fair bit in the late 90's.

Really??

Remember when EVERY team was flooding in the mid 2000s? Literally everybody was moaning about the state of the game and wishing we were back in the late 90s.

That Richmond game, the one where they took a world record amount of marks by playing keepings off reminds me of football in the 2000s.

 

[The Swert]

Then don’t say from the wing.

I don’t say Dusty kicks goals from the midfield.

Or Short from the backline.

If you have trouble with Ablett, this article must give you a seizure:

Breaking down each AFL's club 2023 goals tally by position

See how many goals midfielder and defenders are contributing for your club this year👇

www.zerohanger.com

 

[HairyO]

He was also a dirty player at the time and used his size to his advantage to hurt people. Dermie called it out before the incident with the girl.

Dermott Brereton hits out at Adam Goodes for leading with legs against Hawthorn's Josh Gibson

Brereton slams Goodes for 'leg chop'

www.foxsports.com.au

Also a habit of dropping his elbow on opponents heads in marking and ruck contests and always seemed to be okay with Tribunal when others would get pinged for similar.

 

[Butters and Pepper]

Ken Hinkley is a great coach because Port don't bottom out, with their lowest finish under Hinkley being 11th in 2022.
Higher win percentage than the likes of Mark Williams, Alastair Clarkson and Damien Hardwick as well.

Whoopy f***ing do!

No one gives a flying f*** about minor round success percentages (no one who knows anything about the game, at least)

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Footy was better 10-15 years ago, or in the 80s. It wasn't. It was very good comparatively in the 90s though.

So you say it was t so that’s that? Ok then.
The game was a far better game than this new sport called called AFL.
The only thing the AFL has done well is remove the violence from the game. The rest is just rule change after rule change and it has not made the game better in any facet.

 

[Butters and Pepper]

There is a subset of port supporters (usually older) for who the bolder is very much true. Think they are ‘hard nosed’ who ‘ don’t accept anything but premierships’ when in reality they can’t face the fact that it’s not 1983 anymore and they are a battler club in the scheme of the AFL.

Hinkley is a dud though.

I realise you chose 1983 as a random year, but funnily enough Port didn't make the finals that year and West won thr premiership by beating Sturt.

There could be a (very) small group of Port supporters who expect to win the flag every year, (and probably every club does have a smsll.contingent of those) but I think you.will find that it's merely likely to be the majority of Port supporters think the club should plan towards winning a premiership every year.

Instead the club continually backs in a born loser who says finals are scary, and that it's a tough game and someone has to lose. The majority of Port supporters just expect the club to act like 17 other clubs would after over a decade of mediocrity. Without exception every other club would have sacked him by now

 

[Blue1980]

Footy is always going to be better when you are a kid. You have more passion, it’s life or death. That’s why every oldie are always gonna say it was better in their days…

You’ve got to be able to compartmentalise memories of what else was going on in your life to what the reality was like.

It would be weird if I enjoyed footy more in the 00s than now as a Carlton supporter.

Overall I’d like a little more scoring now but product was strong then and is strong now.

 

[Blue1980]

That Brisbane Bears were a basket case - finished 3rd in 1996 and lost the Prelim to North.

Yes, the narrative they only came good after the merger, when it netted them like one flag player.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Seriously what is so great about today’s game?
It’s 60% or more uncontested.
The kicking has not improved, goal kicking certainly has not improved.
Handball and speed of handball has certainly improved but they are just giving it to a player under pressure most of the time.
Goal scoring has not increased, congestion worse than ever.
What’s so great about it?

 

[Wojcinski]

Then don’t say from the wing.

I don’t say Dusty kicks goals from the midfield.

Or Short from the backline.

Dusty is practically the pioneer of the goal kicking midfielder, in his peak often attending centre bounces, winning the clearance and then finishing the play with a goal.

I refuse to believe you don't know this, you're being deliberately obtuse.

 

[Irish BlueBagger]

Brett Ratten's time at Carlton.

While Ratten was coach of Carlton, everyone said that Carlton had this amazing list chock full of high draft picks and Ratten was an ordinary coach who wasn't getting the best out of this amazing list.

Revisionist history says that Ratten was hard done by and got the best out of a list that had major deficiencies, so much so that Ratten ended up getting a second chance at St Kilda.

I still maintain that Ratts was hard done by. Getting rid of him to bring in Collingwood Mick set the club back years. I felt at the time that he deserved at least another year in charge.

I think Ratts was a very good coach for us. We could've got to a prelim final in 2011 and injuries proved to be our undoing the following year.

Unfortunately we've made a lot of stupid decisions as a club since that 2002 salary cap fiasco. Getting rid of Ratts as coach was the worst of them imo.

 

[The 747]

So you say it was t so that’s that? Ok then.
The game was a far better game than this new sport called called AFL.
The only thing the AFL has done well is remove the violence from the game. The rest is just rule change after rule change and it has not made the game better in any facet.

You do realise this is a forum where people post their opinoins on things right?

 

[HavUEvaSeenTheRain]

Seriously what is so great about today’s game?
It’s 60% or more uncontested.
The kicking has not improved, goal kicking certainly has not improved.
Handball and speed of handball has certainly improved but they are just giving it to a player under pressure most of the time.
Goal scoring has not increased, congestion worse than ever.
What’s so great about it?

Tactics.

 

[Tarkyn_24]

You're saying that 51 metres out = wing. That's clearly not the case on the image (or in reality).

HF stands for wing mate

 

[Headless]

HF stands for wing mate

What's that extra "B" for?

 

[Tarkyn_24]

What's that extra "B" for?

It’s to let you know that yep it’s definitely still the wing

 

[Gavin Excell]

Really??

Remember when EVERY team was flooding in the mid 2000s? Literally everybody was moaning about the state of the game and wishing we were back in the late 90s.

That Richmond game, the one where they took a world record amount of marks by playing keepings off reminds me of football in the 2000s.

Joel Bowden with 295 SC points

 

[MisterMarcus]

Joel Bowden with 295 SC points

Was something like 40 touches and 25 marks, wasn't it?

 

[Gavin Excell]

Was something like 40 touches and 25 marks, wasn't it?

Yes was amusing

 

[Captivating]

How so?

W (the dark green section) = Wing mate

Didn’t kick any goals from there did he?

It's not mate. I don't know what peanut shaded that diagram, but they have no idea about what a wing is.

Here is a clue - look at a bird or aircraft. The body of a bird or aircraft is not the wing.

 

[katmanblue]

Probably the biggest one is that footy was “tougher” in the old days (60s, 70s, 80s).

It was way more violent, but nowhere near as tough.

Players used to routinely shit themselves and pull out in tough situations. They don’t these days because it gets highlighted and replayed 1000 times.

Most of the “big hits” were just assaults on guys who weren’t looking and couldn’t defend themselves.

The sheer amount of violence would be one of the reason blokes would pull out of contests back in the day.

Put your head over the ball against Leigh Matthews and it's 50/50 whether he plays the ball or punches you in the face.

Now, players know they're not going to get king hit, so they can play the ball.

On SM-F926B using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Catsnlakers]

Chris Scott

Chris Scott

Age

48

Ht

182cm

Wt

89kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

16.6

4star

K

11.2

4star

HB

5.4

4star

M

5.1

5star

T

1.6

4star

G

0.4

3star

No current season stats available

D

13.2

4star

K

10.2

4star

HB

3.0

3star

M

2.2

3star

T

2.8

5star

G

0.4

3star

being “handed” his first premiership in 2011 is something I’ve continually read on this forum over the years, very much revisionist history. The truth is he took over an ageing team who got smashed (and was down by as much as 80 points) in a Prelim final to a much younger team, and having lost the best player in the league, & quite possibly this century, at the time. His change of game style to more long kicking & much less handballing enabled us to turn the tables on the Pies & win that years flag, not just rocking up & letting the players run the show as some people will make you believe.

 

[GWT6]

See I reckon that’s a bit revisionist. Check his 2011 season, the year before Dank. He was leading the Brownlow after 7 rounds on 11 votes. Then in the eighth game he went and pulled his hamstring, in the end that cost him six weeks out and he struggled to regain full strength in the muscle. 2012 was a continuation of that 2011 form, without the injury. Average votes per game until his injury in 2011 was 1.5, superior to the 1.36 he achieved in 2012. He was clearly on an upwards trajectory, having improved his fitness and disposal.

Who knows what gear he was on around that time. He has been proven to be a lying drug cheat who refuses to take responsibility for his actions, just like Hird. I think his entire career needs to have an asterisk next to it, just like Hird's playing career.

 

[Back One Out]

Chris Scott being “handed” his first premiership in 2011 is something I’ve continually read on this forum over the years, very much revisionist history. The truth is he took over an ageing team who got smashed (and was down by as much as 80 points) in a Prelim final to a much younger team, and having lost the best player in the league, & quite possibly this century, at the time. His change of game style to more long kicking & much less handballing enabled us to turn the tables on the Pies & win that years flag, not just rocking up & letting the players run the show as some people will make you believe.

Sure... Nobody is suggesting that Scott just turned up to training and set up the witches hats, or that on game days, he cut the oranges for half time. Of course, he coached the team and implemented his own methods. But the main inference is that Geelong's 2011 team was essentially the same group of core players who contested the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Grand Finals. They had played together for a number of seasons. They knew how to prepare for big games. They had formed a well-established on-field chemistry that basically carried them to victory against any opposition with minimal intervention required from the coaches. Guys like Scarlett, Bartel, Selwood, Enright, Ling, Johnson, Chapman, Corey, Mackie, Kelly, etc all knew what needed to be done and they did it.

Similar in many ways to when Alan Joyce took the reins at Hawthorn after Allan Jeans was hospitalised with an aneurysm and he coached a dominant Hawthorn team to the 1988 premiership. And won another again in 1991 after Jeans called it quits following 1990 season. 2 separate seasons for 2 flags. Nobody can deny that Joyce did a great job and got the Hawks firing on all cylinders. But it was Allan Jeans who built those champion teams who were basically driven by self-motivating players who basically coached themselves and demanded high standards from everyone and kept their younger teammates in line.

^^ People often used that to bring Jeans down a peg, saying stuff like "Pfft... Even I could've coached that Hawthorn team to a premiership" but I think they miss the point that it's a mark of coaching greatness when a coach develops the club culture to get things to that point and he empowers his players to run take ownership and be able to run things themselves. We see that with many of the greatest teams (not just in the AFL, but in all sports around the world.)

 

[Iago]

Sure... Nobody is suggesting that Scott just turned up to training and set up the witches hats, or that on game days, he cut the oranges for half time. Of course, he coached the team and implemented his own methods. But the main inference is that Geelong's 2011 team was essentially the same group of core players who contested the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Grand Finals. They had played together for a number of seasons. They knew how to prepare for big games. They had formed a well-established on-field chemistry that basically carried them to victory against any opposition with minimal intervention required from the coaches. Guys like Scarlett, Bartel, Selwood, Enright, Ling, Johnson, Chapman, Corey, Mackie, Kelly, etc all knew what needed to be done and they did it.

Similar in many ways to when Alan Joyce took the reins at Hawthorn after Allan Jeans was hospitalised with an aneurysm and he coached a dominant Hawthorn team to the 1988 premiership. And won another again in 1991 after Jeans called it quits following 1990 season. 2 separate seasons for 2 flags. Nobody can deny that Joyce did a great job and got the Hawks firing on all cylinders. But it was Allan Jeans who built those champion teams who were basically driven by self-motivating players who basically coached themselves and demanded high standards from everyone and kept their younger teammates in line.

^^ People often used that to bring Jeans down a peg, saying stuff like "Pfft... Even I could've coached that Hawthorn team to a premiership" but I think they miss the point that it's a mark of coaching greatness when a coach develops the club culture to get things to that point and he empowers his players to run take ownership and be able to run things themselves. We see that with many of the greatest teams (not just in the AFL, but in all sports around the world.)

I reckon you could make the same argument about Clarkson in 2013 - 2015.